CenturyLink Unveils Advanced Security Service with Palo Alto Networks

CenturyLink is rolling out a new managed firewall service that pairs the features of Palo Alto Networks firewalls with its Security Log Monitoring service, which brings correlated threat intelligence, cloud security monitoring, and threat detection and response capabilities.

Chris Smith, CenturyLink’s vice president of global security services, tells Channel Partners that digital businesses want end-to-end visibility and control over securing their networks without “putting additional strain on limited in-house resources.”

CenturyLink’s Chris Smith

“CenturyLink’s managed Palo Alto firewall helps partners deliver a security solution that goes beyond a traditional managed firewall service, with advanced threat detection and response,” he said. “Managed Palo Alto firewall is ideal for businesses that want to retain on-premises firewalls, but do not have the security personnel on staff to manage threat intelligence and remediation.”

CenturyLink‘s Security Log Monitoring platform manages and monitors a diverse set of Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls with enhanced visibility and threat intelligence capabilities, as well as integration with its portal and mobile application.

“Managed Palo Alto firewalls offer a wide range of intrusion prevention systems throughput, from 610 Mbps to 20 Gbps, and support antivirus, URL filtering, site-to-site and client VPNs, in addition to application awareness and user identification,” Smith said.

According to IDC, managed security services will drive a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 18 percent for security services in 2018.

“At that same time, businesses are demanding more from their security services, including their firewall solutions,” Smith said. “Before launching managed Palo Alto firewall as a standard offering, CenturyLink supported existing customers with Palo Alto Networks firewalls as log sources on our Security Log Monitoring platform.”

With managed Palo Alto firewall, customers can choose the monitoring options that best serve their business needs, either managed by CenturyLink or by in-house resources.

“We are pleased to work with CenturyLink to offer customers a managed next-generation firewall that has the intelligence, automation and high performance to stop attacks in their tracks,” said Karl Soderlund, Palo Alto Networks’ senior vice president of worldwide channels.